DONALD the cat has taken to slinking off to the garden – because his owner is just a gal who can’t say no.

Weather presenter Carol Kirkwood – along with three other BBC hosts – has agreed to learn to play the piano well enough to perform at a gala ­concert for Children in Need in front of millions of people.

Unfortunately, Donald is not a fan of her efforts so far.

Carol, who has never played and admits she cannot read music, said: “Every time I start, he goes out looking at me as if to say, ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ I got a loan of a keyboard, which sits on my dining room table, and I work hard at it because I don’t want to fail.

“I have never played the piano and I cannot read music but, when people ask me to do these things, I tend to say yes and worry about the consequences later.”

This admirable but risky attitude to life is not without its moments – as Carol has ­discovered. Her job as BBC’s Breakfast weather host has taken her to lots of wonderful places such as Royal Ascot, Wimbledon and Buckingham Palace, where her Scottish accent has cheered up the country while informing them of the awful weather on the way.

But last year, on The Great British Weather Show, she agreed to go hang-gliding.

Carol, 50, said: “As I get older, I am getting to be more of a daredevil but that was the scariest thing I have done and I will never do it again.

“With hang-gliding, all that’s between you and eternity is a wee kite, a metal frame and the ­equivalent of a sleeping bag.

“When we took off, because we had to get up to the cloud base five miles up, we were towed up by a tiny plane and the tow rope snapped at two miles up. We had to make a crash landing and I was like, ‘Oh no, please don’t let this happen.’

“As soon as we landed, it was straight back up again. That was probably the right thing to do because I don’t know if they would have got me back on again if I had time to think about it.

“I was praying the whole way. It was terrifying.”

Carol was brought up in the west Highland village of Morar, where her mum played organ in the village church.

She did a commerce degree at Napier University in Edinburgh then worked at the BBC in London as a secretary.

Her first broadcast was in Glasgow for the religious department on Radio Scotland, Radio 2 and Radio 4.

In 1993, she joined the Television Training Department as a presenter but it was not until three years later – when the Americans moved into Britain with The Weather Channel – that she was given specialist meteorological training and her career really took off.

Carol Kirkwood reading the weather on BBC Breakfast

Carol said: “I was asked to go for an audition but was very reluctant.

“I thought, ‘I’m not really interested. It’s not what I want to do and I don’t know much about the weather.’

“But I went along to the audition and took to it like a duck to water – it was love at first sight. I ­absolutely adored it.

“It’s the stupid thrill of there being nothing behind you but this plasma screen which is either lime green or blue and you see yourself in reverse on what would be an ­autocue camera if there was one.

“And you run your finger down a weatherfront which isn’t there but you are right on it.”

But sometimes there are things behind Carol that she is not aware of – and sometimes her pal and former BBC colleague Dermot Murnaghan, used to put them there.

Carol revealed: “We had Sean Bean on a few times and this time I had been talking to him in the Green Room before nipping down into the Blue Peter garden to do the weather.

“Dermot was through to me before I began the weather and he said to me, ‘Carol, do you know we have Sean Bean in?’

“I said, ‘Oh yes, I do.’

“And he said, ‘Are you a bit of a fan then?’

“And I said, ‘Definitely, he is absolutely gorgeous,’ as they pulled the camera out to expose Sean Bean just behind me.

“He was just chuckling but I was so embarrassed.

“It’s one thing having a joke with your friends but another saying that to someone – especially someone as famous as he is – and it was live.

“The whole world saw it and Dermot has never let me forget it but it’s part of the banter on Breakfast and it is good fun, even when things go wrong.

“Like on the day we had snow in the Blue Peter garden and it was quite heavy and we had these snow sculptors come in.

“They spent all morning making a teapot out of snow because it was Breakfast, I suppose, and the teapot is a symbol of breakfast.

“Before we went live, I said to one of them, ‘Is it quite sturdy, is it all right to touch it?’

“He said, ‘Oh gosh, yes, it’s fine. It’s well-packed snow.’

“So, again, we were live and I touched it – and the whole thing just crumbled.

“They were so crestfallen and all I could say was, ‘Oh I’m sorry,’ but it’s not as though I whacked it. They were such nice people.”

Carol Kirkwood, who is taking piano lessons with Nigel Wilkinson

Carol is hoping that there will be no such mishaps on October 29 when she takes to the stage with Radio 1’s Dev, Tim Smith from Radio 2’s Steve Wright Show and Radio 3 jazz host Jez Nelson.

She is quite tickled that at her first lesson, her teacher, Nigel Wilkinson, had her playing scales with both hands and they even managed a basic rendering of Ode to Joy.

Her previous accomplishment had been Chopsticks.

It bodes well for what the four will play on the night – Beethoven, Grieg or perhaps something a little more modern like Gershwin?

Carol said: “Umm, well, I’m not too sure. But I think it might be Twinkle Twinkle.”